Former FDA commissioner heads CMS

FDA Consumer, May-June, 2004

Former FDA Commissioner Mark B. McClellan, M.D., Ph.D., is the new administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Dr. Lester M. Crawford has been named acting FDA commissioner.

McClellan became the 18th Commissioner of Food and Drugs in November 2002. A native of Austin, Texas, McClellan was a professor, physician, and health care economist at Stanford University before moving to Washing ton, D.C., in 1998 to work in the Clinton administration.

McClellan, who became Medicare administrator on March 25, 2004, received his medical degree from the Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology Division of Health Sciences and Technology in 1992. He received a doctorate in economics from MIT a year later.

McClellan replaces Thomas Scully, who resigned in December 2003.